From the episode:
"We are students of life, and life is the best teacher you can have." - Tonia McIntosh
"The lesson that day may not have been the lesson you want to learn, but it was the lesson you needed to learn." - Brandy Little
"We're not optimist, we're valueist - we find meaning and value in everything." - Tonia McIntosh
"Life is about where you are putting your focus." - Brandy Little
"I'm not ignoring the bad things that happen, but instead of dwelling on them, I'm constantly asking, 'How can I pivot this to something that I have control over fixing, that can be more productive, or can serve me?'" - Brandy Little
"I love the word alchemy, because I have lived in darkness and bad things have happened to me, but they always lead to an opporunity for alchemy, where that experience can turn into whatever I want. And I choose, more often than not, to turn it into something that's beautiful and happy." = Tonia McIntosh
"It's a choice. You can look at a storm and see a storm or see the rainbow that it produces." - Brandy Little
"Walking through a fire is not pleasant. It's painful." - Brandy Little
"Optimism is finding beauty in everything." - Tonia McIntosh
"I find beauty in pessimism, it can be part of the process of optimism." - Tonia McIntosh
"You need to sometimes focus on the bad parts. You can't discount them, because you need them to change and grow. They show us that there's a problem, it's pain and pain shows us is there is a problem. There's something that we need to fix and change." - Brandy Little
"We have to have hope even when things are hopeless. Hope is what gets you through things. Even when everything feels hopeless, the only way out of that is to have hope. You have to find the things that are going to get you out of the muck and the mire. If you have hope you have somewhere to go. If you don't have hope, there is nowhere to go." - Brandy Little
"You have to have faith and trust in the process. If you're assuming about a situation, then you're not listening and you're not leaving room for learning and actually seeing the situation as it is." - Tonia McIntosh
"All possibilities always exist at all times." - Tonia McIntosh
"I'm always looking to prove my assumption's wrong, because if I know nothing can break it down, then I know that it's probably something I can rely on. I need to know that it can't be punched. So I'm constantly punching it myself or looking for other things that will reshape it." - Brandy Little
"Side note, we are not scientists." - Tonia McIntosh
"We're not dealing in absolutes and I think that's what an optimist is leaving room for - leaving room for the best outcome to exist." - Tonia McIntosh
"I always believe that the best of someone or the best of something could happen, because it exists. If the worst exists, then the best also has to exist." - Tonia McIntosh
"I thoroughly believe that we are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you go into something already expecting a negative outcome of failure, then for multiple reasons you can't even be cognizant of you are going to bring them about." - Brandy Little
"Some of the worst times in my life, I have found they are some of the best times in the sense that I was able to grow and become the person that I am now and the parts of myself that I like." - Brandy Little
"You are a creation of yourself." - Tonia McIntosh
"I do think that we can choose who we want to be in different situations, and the more and more we make choices the easier those choices become. When we begin to rewire ourselves in this way, we then begin to create who we are." - Tonia Mcintosh
"If you're always blaming your external world, then you have no power to make any decisions or changes for yourself. I will always go internal, because I can't control the external. What I can control is my choices and my responses. So I'm constantly like, given those constraints, how do I overcome this? How do I maximize myself and be all I can possibly be given my constraints?" - Brandy Little
"Make choices out of love instead of fear." - Tonia McIntosh
Books Referenced
"The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom" by Don Miguel Ruiz | https://amzn.to/37AS2YG
"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein | https://amzn.to/2HTLERO
Quotes Referenced
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” - Fred Rogers
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